I receive lots of questions around deploying Vista today or wait until Windows 7 hits the stores! Microsoft created such a wonderful product in Windows XP so in a sense they are a victim to their own success!
But Vista is not that complicated to deploy and application compability is much much less of an issue today than it was before. Microsoft have made the right investments in order to lower the complexity to deploy Vista.
Many customers are now seriously considering skipping Vista and wait until Windows 7 is available which is likely to happen some time late 2009 or early 2010.
My take on this is that I think that Vista is now fully baked and ready for deployment. When SP1 was launched it got my sign of approval and soon we will have SP2 which makes it even better. Because Vista and Windows 7 will share the same Kernel it will be easy to make the transition from Vista to Windows 7 - it is more like a 'Service & Feature Pack'.
The best approach is to increase the maturity in your infrastructure so that you have a great system and the right processes for deployment. You should build the foundation that gives you the ability to use a mix of Windows XP on the current PCs and Windows Vista on all new PCs. SCCM 2007 is the right system for deployment and the 'cook book' is available from Microsoft and from seasoned partners.
As older PCs gets phased out your mix of Vista will increase and then it becomes less of a costly 'big bang' and more of a strategy. Every PC that have Vista will then be easy to upgrade to Windows 7 and by that time all your Windows XPs will have been retired.
So co-existence with XP and Vista today and then upgrade all Vista PCs to Windows 7 some time 2010. no need to upgrade old PCs to Vista but all new PCs should have Vista.
That's my advice!
Regards, Per
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